post

By Michael Grey* There is an open season on merchant mariners at present, and not in a nice way, with the warring parties around the Strait of Hormuz accompanying their confusing messages with a willingness to fire into innocent merchant ships in international waters. At least twenty seafarers have been killed in these incidents, which

By Michael Grey* On the occasion of last month’s “Day of the Seafarer”, I wonder how many of them felt properly appreciated. As members of a largely invisible workforce, in most of their home countries, it would be forgivable if this annual event was greeted with no more than a shrug. Even those trapped behind

By Michael Grey* As this is being written, and if nothing more untoward occurs, the little expedition ship Hondius is due to arrive at Rotterdam after her grim encounter with the deadly Hantavirus on her latest cruise in Southern waters. The crew, who have been operating this ship in what appears to have been heroic

By Michael Grey* “Hormuz commanded the traffic along the shores of the Indian Ocean, linking what are now Oman and Pakistan, as well as the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz up to Basra in Iraq.” It was “a dust blown port with no natural resources, but with as many as 40,000 inhabitants.” Seeking some

By Michael Grey* It was in the 1950s, during an earlier Middle East crisis, that the wife of a British Prime Minister complained that the Suez Canal was flowing through her sitting room. Today, of course, we have a different watercourse dominating the news and it is difficult to consider anything else. Nevertheless, we must

By Michael Grey* You would like to hope that all sorts of useful lessons are being learned from the current conflict in the Middle East, and not just about the consequences of offending irrational world leaders, with a short fuse and no sense of history. In staff colleges and war studies institutions, where cerebral military